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Firefox 8 Beta arrives with Twitter search

As expected following the arrival of the stable version of Firefox 7, Mozilla has announced the release of version 8.0 of Firefox into the web browser's Beta Channel. Available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, Firefox 8 Beta is based on the Gecko 8 engine. According to the Releases wiki, it is scheduled to arrive in a stable production-ready form on 8 November.

Control of add-ons has been improved – when Firefox launches and detects that a new third-party add-on has been installed, the add-on will be disabled until approved by the user. Additionally, when users upgrade to Firefox 8 they will be presented with a one-time dialog for approving previously installed add-ons.

Version 8 adds Twitter as a default search option
Twitter has been added as a new default search option; only English, Portuguese and Slovenian languages are currently supported but more "will be added in future releases". Using the "Restore tabs on demand" feature, users can now choose to load the content of tabs only when they are selected. Tab animation when re-ordering tabs or detaching them from a current window has also been improved. Other changes include WebSockets updates, Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) for WebGL textures, and support for HTML5 media elements and the native right-click menu.

The Firefox Beta for Android app has also been updated to include Twitter search, and now has the ability to add any bookmarked site to the Android Home Screen. Password security has been enhanced through the implementation of master password support.

More details about the Beta Channel version can be found in a post on Mozilla's Future Releases blog and in the release notes. Users can download the beta of Firefox 8 from the project's Firefox Future Releases web page. Existing Beta Channel users should receive an update notification within 24 to 48 hours. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they find.